Meanwhile in the Hospital
by butterfly collective
Summary: Just after Scream 4, Jill didn't die or become famous. But she has a final act in mind.
1. Chapter 1

Life sure did suck didn't it?

That's what Jill thought as she lay back in her hospital bed after she'd been jumpstarted back to life by the medical team. Ironic, considering she'd nearly had her brains fried by her traitorous aunt Sydney who'd shocked her with those same paddles.

She tugged her hands but the restraints bit into her skin. Damn weren't they supposed to be padded with cotton when they used them? Why did she have to be restrained anyway? This was all one horrible misunderstanding.

And now she lay in a straitjacket in a hospital bed while the news media complete with cameras and web casters were interviewing Sydney.

The newly re-crowned heroine of the latest reboot of the Woodborro murders as they were called by the press. Yeah, she heard about it because Nurse Nancy always made sure her television was broadcasting the local news before she'd unplugged the remote.

Just to torture her in the days before Dewey's men picked her up in chains and put her in the paddy wagon to sit in a jail cell until her trial on murder charges. That's if they didn't decide to instead put her in a padded cell in a mental hospital. Some experts hired by a couple of television networks had been consulted on whether or not she'd been insane when she committed the latest round of serial killings.

As if.

No, Jill had been of sane mind and sound body when she had concocted the perfect plan to make herself an icon on the internet. The sweet young innocent thing that had fought against a masked killer that had haunted the quiet little town for too long and she had vanquished them. Only not soon enough to save the beloved Sydney Prescott who had been brutally slain…how tragic was that?

She had her accomplice lined up in Charlie who wasn't drop dead gorgeous enough to sleep with or anything but pitiful enough of a geek to pine for her. Enough so he'd do whatever she asked if he believed he would share her heroic status.

Pitiful little boy really. There could only be room for one hero in this franchise. See that's what had been flawed about the previous one was that with Sydney, dim-witted Dewey and his sidekick, the narcissistic Gail it had been too cluttered with do-gooders.

No her version of the storyline would be much more streamlined and an improvement on the original. And it had almost worked…almost. It would have if it hadn't been her aunt, otherwise known as the Angel of Death named Sydney.

Jill's rage grew inside of her just remembering what had been ripped away from her, fame and fortune that had been rightfully hers. It's not like dimwit Dewey would have ever solved the case. No she would have been home free and blasted from one coast to the other on the internet if it hadn't been for one person…

* * *

Sydney walked away from the podium as paparazzi snapped her photo not for the first time. They'd been tailing her relentlessly for years even when she'd tried to put this whole mess behind her. She didn't want the attention or what some would call fame.

Notoriety she called it. She'd begged them away from her so many times she couldn't count and now…she had tried to kill her own cousin in self defense and the media had descended on the hospital flooding the corridors to the room where Jill lay zapped on the floor awaiting a trip to the morgue.

Until suddenly her eyes snapped open and she had woken up.

From brave heroine to callous villainess in one sweep…fame was fleeting after all. Soon after the bodies of Jill's mother and her friends had been processed, Sydney would arrange for a burial at the local cemetery for blood kin. Now that most of their family tree was dead and buried, she was the only one left to do it. The others would be interred by their respective grieving relatives.

Dewey sat in the back during the press conference ceding his domain to the state prosecutor so he could comfortably lay his battered body in a gurney to be wheeled in the back. The television crews had set up their equipment and his wife Gail had checked herself out of the hospital to grab the closest notepad and jot notes for her newest book. She hummed away as she did it, her body all bandaged up and he watched her, renewed love in his blackened eyes.

* * *

Jill tugged at the restraints and finally one of them came loose. She sprung out of bed as if she were on fire and realized that one of the electrodes pasted to her head was burning her flesh. She grabbed a robe and slipped outside into the corridor.

The hallway was empty and she heard muffled voices. The double doors awaited at the end, brightly lit and she walked towards them, limped actually. She glanced to her left and saw that horrid Sydney at the podium surrounded by flashing bulbs. Anger filled her because that should have been her standing up there getting all the attention for her heroic deeds. Dewey was strapped to the gurney pathetic as always and didn't see her.

She went into a side room and fumbled in the drawers of a cabinet until she found what she needed. Some ether and some matches and suddenly she knew what she had to do.

How to get all of their attention before the place went sky high. Oh except for her who would crawl out of the crumbling, burning remnants of the hotel with an amazing story of bravery and sacrifice to tell to anyone who would listen.

With purpose, she grabbed her loot and headed to those doors.


	2. Chapter 2

Dewey stood there, his body slumped over the podium. He'd been bashed in the noggin by a bed pan and battered while struggling with the latest twist of fate since this whole saga with Ghostface had begun years earlier. His eyes were blackened, dry blood crusted his broken nose and his hands were wrapped in bandages not unlike with a prizefighter.

Sometimes he felt like one. After all, he'd battled against three freaks dressed up in masks and black robes so far, make that six because it felt like each time there were two deranged killers with twisted agendas and backstories for the price of one. Maybe it saved on costume rentals.

But anyway the latest batch of killings had been done by none other than Sydney's own blood kin. Jill had done it just to garnish instant fame for herself on the internet because she didn't cut it in her own ordinary and somewhat pathetic life as a high school student living on the fringes of the notoriety which surrounded Sydney most of her life.

Gail looked worse for wear herself having been stabbed and nearly gutted like a fish. But she would never cease to be beautiful to him as she stood nearby on crutches. The whole world was watching Woodsboro which had celebrated the anniversary of the original stabbings by becoming drenched in blood all over again.

"So how do we know the bloodbath is over," one reporter asked, "when you just told us that Jill Roberts was the heroine and now she's the killer?"

Oh that, Dewey sighed, an innocent mistake. They'd seen all these dead and dying teens sprawled out among broken furniture and shattered glass at a private home. Jill had been the only one who was conscious and Sydney had been hanging on by a thread with a gut wound. Several others had been stabbed or in one case shot.

Some poor guy Jill had been dating named Trevor Sheldon had even been shot…he couldn't even say it but thinking back with his amazing deductive powers, that should have been seen as a crucial clue to the identity of the real killer.

Why else would he have been shot in his most delicate parts except by a jilted girlfriend?

"I…we…the investigation is still in its earliest days," Dewey said carefully, "but we're fairly confident a remorseless killer's been taken off the street."

"Uh huh…right," the reporter continued, "so when did you discover that Jill Roberts had masterminded all of the killings?"

Dewey knew it was going to be a long day.

* * *

Sydney struggled to breathe with her oxygen tubing and the stomach tube that fed nutrients down her bruised and swollen throat. She'd been conscious for about an hour this morning after hearing the sounds of media trucks congregating outside the window.

It must be about the latest round of murders. Of course, she tried to remember but it didn't come to her what had happened…how she'd wound up in another hospital bed. Her body had been carved up into an intricate web of scars and now she could tell she'd added more of them to the list.

She remembered a searing pain in her gut and the shock of the stabbing or something else…she tried to remember who'd tried to ice her but it proved elusive.

Damn, she tried to lift her head but she had so many tubes tethering her to different devices meant to keep her alive. She'd felt her life ebbing away but somehow she'd been strong enough to persevere once again.

Then she thought about Jill…what had happened to her? Something about Jill's mother dying, collapsing to the floor after someone had slipped a nice through the mail slot in hopes of striking flesh. Then it got hazy after that. She barely remembered waking up periodically to a flash of images and sounds, lights and beeps before slipping into darkness again.

What was it that she needed to remember? A figure in the darkness of her hospital room…a struggle on the floor…hand to hand combat and frying someone's brains with electrical paddles. She wished the fogginess of her brain would just clear already.

Before the murderous figure returned to finish what had been started.

* * *

Jill rolled her eyes as she walked past the nurses' station. The stitches above her eyebrows itched and she felt dry blood still matted in her hair. She held the ether and matches and knew she'd have to pick her spot and time it all well.

Blowing the hospital sky high would certainly get her noticed and get her a lot of press. Once again, Sydney had stolen the spotlight from her and that pissed her off. After all the intricate planning and the painstaking and painful execution…it had all gone south when a slip of the tongue to Dewey the dimwitted sheriff had blown her cover.

The press outside was revering Sydney no doubt and it just filled her with the most vexing of anger. How dare they do that after she'd pulled off the nearly perfect killing spree? Okay she'd wanted to be the young pure heroine who overturned two villains who'd killed all her friends but maybe it'd make her more famous if she herself was the villainess.

After all most killers got way more than the 15 minutes of fame didn't they? She looked at the ether and matches she held in her sliced up hands and thought maybe she'd delay that part of her plan for a while and try something else.

Maybe it was time for she, Jill Roberts, to hold a press conference of her own.


End file.
